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Comment by peteretep | Hacker News Reader

> Elon Musk preys on the hopeful and optimistic

Yes but he also launches rockets into fucking space; that is to say, he may be selling snake oil, but he’s also selling legitimate magic beans.

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This is a physics problem (well constrained) versus biology and even worse consciousness where we are pretty much at ground zero. His claims/promises about what will be possible are absurd eg being able to store and replay memories. Snake oil territory. A marketing event for his messianic persona so fanboys buy more Tesla stock.

It is only rocket science, which is as we all know very easy /s.

It may actually be relatively easy compared to what he is trying with Neuralink.

Indeed. He also launches supposedly self-driving passenger cars into concrete barriers.

It’s the latter that’s causing some concern I’d think.

Is it more or less concerning than when humans do the same?

Autonomous driving is still a relatively young beast. I don't have specific numbers infront of me, but I imagine mile for mile, autonomous vehicles are still safer than humans.

I also don't trust random humans to drill holes in my head.

its hardly random...

> He also launches supposedly self-driving passenger cars into concrete barriers.

Planes used to fall a lot in the beginning, computer hardware was once finicky and unreliable, even rockets used to blow up before they got it right. Takes time, and sometimes it takes early adopters trust to get to safety.

How many public deaths is an acceptable number? What about those dead who, rather than being "early adopters", just happened to be in the way of one - is there a line in the sand where we say "OK, we've sacrificed enough humans now, let's try something else"?

I feel like you’re suggesting the answer is “zero deaths”, where it’s clearly _at least_ as many as the current road fatality rate, which is about 100 a day in the US alone.

Also , which has been done for decades.

...by governments motivated to have launchable nuclear weapons, not by private citizens creating profitable companies through venture capital. Reusable rockets put his companies work way ahead of government rocketry capabilities.

What do you think Musk’s company relied on for their space program? The novel aspects of that company are a tiny blip on all the government-funded research incorporated into its launch and vehicle systems.

Saying a private company put that vehicle in space is technically true but also at the same time highly misleading.

By the same logic no internet company has ever done anything more than a tiny blip of work compared to the accumulated effort of millions of scientists spanning many years that lead to mass produced GHz microprocessors.

And he does it very behind the first five to fifteen schedules he's promised, which is in line with the examples the article used.

And cars.

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